Geraldine Finlayson

Geraldine Finlayson (born 31 October 1960) is a Gibraltarian scientist and CEO of the Gibraltar National Museum.

She worked in the civil service of the Government of Gibraltar from 1981 to 1993.

For many years, Finlayson has studied the presence of Neanderthals in Gibraltar, having performed several excavations in the region, including underwater.

Finlayson was Director of the John Mackintosh Hall from 1993 to 2011.

During that time she oversaw a great many public functions, including conferences, exhibitions, and concerts.

She is currently the CEO of the Gibraltar National Museum.

She is also Co-Director of the Underwater Research Unit (URU), the activities of which include surveying the seabed and caves for the Gibraltar Caves Project, conducting a comprehensive survey of Gibraltar's Submerged Heritage for the Heritage Database, and carrying out wreck surveys and pre-disturbance surveys on archaeological sites.

Furthermore, she is an Advanced Diver and Open Water Instructor with BS-AC, a Tutor with the Nautical Archaeology Society, and a Senior Tutor at the Gibraltar Museum.

Finlayson's research interests include the relationship among climate, vegetation, landscape features and biodiversity; the spatio-temporal distribution patterns of vegetation and animals, focusing mainly on the Southern Iberian Peninsula and the Quaternary; the cultural influences on the development of "Gibraltarian cuisine"; and the study of Gilbraltar's "underwater cultural heritage."

In 2003 Finlayson and the rest of the Gibraltar Museum team were awarded first prize in the National Archeological Society's "Adopt-a-Wreck" programme for their work on the armed trawler HMS Erin, and in 2006 Geraldine was granted the Gibraltar Award in the Queen's Birthday Honours List

Finlayson gave a talk entitled "The John Mackintosh Hall – 40 years on" on 13 April 2004, about the cultural and sports venue in Gibraltar.

Finlayson earned her PhD in 2006 by the Anglia Ruskin University, Cambridge, UK, where she presented the thesis "Climate, vegetation and biodiversity: a multiscale study of the south of the Iberian Peninsula."

At the sixth Iberian Quaternary Congress in 2006, Finlayson "presented an innovative method in which she reconstructed in fine detail the habitat of the Neanderthals outside Gorham’s Cave".

In 2008, Finlayson, along with Prof. Clive Finlayson and Dr Darren Fa, visited Malta at the invitation of that nation's Superintendence of Cultural Heritage.

The team examined an archaeological dig and provided advice on the work underway.

They also discussed a possible long-term collaborative project applying the Gibraltar model to the Maltese islands.

Geraldine and Clive Finlayson gave a lecture on human evolution at the University of Granada in 2009.

The lecture, entitled "The Luck of Man: the role of historical contingency in human evolution", traced the history of the evolution of Homo sapiens.

In November 2010, Finlayson gave a lecture at the Annual Conference of the Nautical Archaeological Society (NAS) held at Portsmouth University in the UK.

Her presentation concerned "the Gibraltar Method", which had been developed by her and teammates in Gibraltar and which was now central to "the study and protection of submerged heritage".

She was Director of the John Mackintosh Hall until October 2011.

She has played a major role in developing the "Gibraltar method" of archaeological research, especially that carried out underwater, and is one of a team of scientists who have made major discoveries about the nature of Neanderthal culture.

Finlayson was born in Gibraltar and attended Gilbraltar Girls Comprehensive School.

Finlayson made a guest appearance as herself, in the episode 48 ("Das dunkle Geheimnis der Neandertaler", 2012) of the first season of the Austrian TV series Terra Mater.

Finlayson gave a lecture in 2012 in Gibraltar as part of the series "Hidden Worlds and Our Intangible Heritage."

Finlayson gave representatives of the media a tour of Gorham's Cave during the annual expert exploration thereof in 2012.

In September 2012, the Gibraltar Museum team, led by Clive Finlayson and including Geraldine Finlayson, published a paper in the journal PLOS One, "Birds of a feather", which argued that “Neanderthals had cognitive capacity which permitted them to think symbolically possibly by the use of ornamentation." This was described by Clive Finlayson as "a huge step forward" in the understanding of Neanderthals. In short, the message was "that the Neanderthals were 'thinking people' and that they were able to extract from the environment," for example "by cutting the feathers and inner bones from the birds of prey they captured, leaving them with the outer shell, and using them as ornaments as has been the case in other cultures across the world."

Finlayson was one of the authors of a paper by "Key to a lost world in Gibraltar", that was published in 2013 in Geomorphology, She explained to journalists that Gibraltar was once "a Mediterranean Serengeti" where "deer, wild horse and cattle grazed on the savannahs and were stalked by a strange mix of predators that included Spotted Hyaenas, Leopards, Brown Bears, Wolves and Lynxes. This was truly a bit of Africa in Europe".

Along with two earlier 2013 papers, this was described by Finlayson as ”a remarkable output of scientific literature for such a small institution as the Gibraltar Museum, comparable to the best research centres in European and North American universities....We have been working very hard to make Gibraltar a Centre of Excellence and we are getting there.

We are grateful to the support that HM Government of Gibraltar has given us and we are optimistic that, with this backing, we can take Gibraltar to yet another level".

In 2018, Finlayson was appointed Adjunct Professor at Liverpool John Moores University's Faculty of Science.

In 2019, Finlayson was bestowed the Gibraltar Medallion of Distinction, together with her husband Clive, for their work on Gorham's Cave.

Finlayson's husband, Clive Finlayson, is an evolutionary ecologist who is Curator at the Gibraltar National Museum and who, along with his wife, participates in digs in the Neanderthal caves in Gibraltar and elsewhere.

He keeps a blog about these activities at clivehumanevo.blogspot.com, and they have collaborated on many papers and other writings.

He is the author of the book Neanderthals and Modern Humans.

They have a son together.